Anonymous After Sony for SOPA Support

SOPA is an incredibly controversial subject around the web these days. The bill, which is currently making its way through the U.S. Congress, sets strict rules for the enforcement of copyright protections across the web – rules that some web enthusiast claim could end the Internet as we know it. The basic breakdown works like this: if a site hosts copyrighted content, that site can be permanently blocked by the U.S. government, regardless of whether the site owner was responsible for the posting.

As SOPA has drawn closer and closer to a vote, opposition has increased. The biggest story so far occurred last week, when news of GoDaddy’s support of the bill caused customers to un-register over 20,000 domains in protest. GoDaddy has since changed its tune, moving from the position of helping author the bill (sort of) to the position of vehement opposition. It was a strong demonstrator of the power of numbers.

It looks like Sony may be next on the list of potential targets, as Anonymous (the loosely affiliated band of hackers, trolls and other Internet personas) has declared war on the company due to its support for the SOPA legislation. Anonymous, never one for subtlety, has promised “the end” for Sony and its associates.

The attacks will likely be targeted at PSN, as Anonymous will no doubt try to take the network down in protest of Sony’s SOPA support. This is an interesting predicament – on the one hand, it’s nice to see the public holding a company accountable for its actions, on the other, most of the people affected by a PSN outage are merely innocent customers.

We’ll just have to see how this one plays out. When Anonymous focuses on something, they’re usually quite a force, but they’re not always the best at getting everything together. Stay tuned for updates.

What do you think about the idea of punishing players to send a message to Sony?